


The Party That Never Ends

by LadyAramisGrey



Series: Round and Round the Mulberry Bush [2]
Category: Gravity Falls, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Being Homura Is Suffering, Bill is smitten, Eldritch Abominations Unite, F/F, Homura is Sad, Homura is once again making bad life choices, Madoka is Dead, Multi, There's Good Martinis, but hey, for real this time, like seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:08:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22028341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAramisGrey/pseuds/LadyAramisGrey
Summary: Round 1: Homura's universe has ended, but somehow, she survived. Now she must move on to the broader multiverse and find a new purpose without Madoka.
Relationships: Akemi Homura/Bill Cipher, Akemi Homura/Kaname Madoka
Series: Round and Round the Mulberry Bush [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1585615
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	The Party That Never Ends

**Author's Note:**

> This is an older story idea I've worked on for a while; it's got a whole series planned. This is the only one I'm prepared to post for now, though. Enjoy!

There was nothing left. No hope, no reason, no…anything. She’d been here, curled up in the nothing, long enough that even the dead remnants of a shattered universe had dissipated, leaving her with…nothing.

But then, perhaps that was what she’d always had, and she’d just been fooling herself before.

All that effort, meaningless.

Tens of years—no, hundreds. Or possibly thousands. She’d played out the same loop over and over for a while, reveling in her victory. Reveling in having the person most precious to her safe and happy and nearby. Meanwhile, she’d gone on with her personal vendetta, destroying Incubators and wraiths alike. She’d utterly decimated the Incubator species, but the entropy of the world was more difficult to root out.

Looping back over the same period of time had been fun for a little while—almost a game, a dare to the others to figure out what was going on, to catch her out and give her something _fun_ to do—but she’d already relived time enough that it got tedious within a few hundred turns. So…she’d been daring enough to do something else. She’d allowed them all to _live_. New experiences, new lives, all growing up like they’d never gotten the chance to in the hundreds of timelines where they had all died horrible, tragic deaths. Oh, time still wasn’t quite right in her labyrinth-universe. Everyone seemed to age much slower than they should. Sometimes she would forget to allow the seasons to change, and it would stay spring for a year or two. Nobody noticed. Her powers were strong. Too strong.

How had Homura never considered that every time she turned back time, Madoka wasn’t the only person being granted a new boost in power?

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She’d _considered_ it. Particularly after Madoka had become the Law of Cycles. She supposed it hadn’t affected her power any before because she’d made her wish before ever going back in time. The power was all there, but it was bundled up in potential already released. And then Madoka had rewritten time for what Homura had assumed would be the last time. And in this new universe, Homura had a different wish, though it was still centered around Madoka, and all her potential had been bound up in her new powers. Homura had wished to be the guardian of a goddess, the “power that smites anyone who threatens her”. Really, it was a wonder her wish itself hadn’t granted her the power of a goddess right off the bat. What it had done was instead far more insidious—to both Homura herself and to Madoka.

It gave Homura the power to resist the Law of Cycles if she so wished. This was a power she had to activate consciously, and so as she edged closer to despair, she’d kept herself from being purified even as her wings went from beautiful clean white to witch-corrupt blackened patterns. It had been so, so difficult near the end. Possibly it was why being placed in the isolation field by the Incubators had been enough to push her over the edge.

The Incubators had been wrong. Not surprising, since to them witches were an unstudied hypothesis in the current universe, but they had been wrong all the same. A witch did not need to be outside her soul gem to be fully born. The “chick who grew up in the egg” analogy was perhaps similar, but it wasn’t exactly what had happened. Homura’s own, secret power to keep her out of the hands of the Law of Cycles had protected her, building a false world where she could be mindlessly happy with Madoka and the rest of their team, but she had still become a witch even before the luring had begun. She had been a witch as she ran around having fun fighting Nightmares, as she delved into the unsettling strangeness of her self-crafted false world, and it had been finally realizing the truth that she _was_ a witch that had pushed her over the edge enough to make her existence as a witch visible. And still, her power had granted her the self-control to keep from releasing any curses until she had learnt the full extent of Kyuubey’s plan.

Of course she’d gone to die then. She was a trap for Madoka. She was the only one that _could_ be a trap, because she was the only person who remembered Madoka ever existing. The Incubators could not do this with anyone else—Madoka simply wouldn’t be able to reach them, because they did not know to invite her in as Homura had. If Homura died, Madoka would be safe forever because knowledge of Madoka would die with Homura.

Homura knew that even before she died, she could possibly make this endeavor so costly that the Incubators would decide further action against the Law of Cycles would be pointless. If even one of her Clara Dolls—her familiars—escaped, they could become a new version of her witch form, who couldn’t be purified by the Law of Cycles because their grief seeds would be artificial, made of murdered humans and not a magical girl’s corrupted wish. It would be a devastating and terrifying thing for the magical girls of this reality to face, but the damage her familiars turned witches could do would hopefully deter the Incubators from further pursuing the idea of restoring the original world order.

…She should have known the others wouldn’t leave her to die while they still thought she was salvageable. Even Sayaka, whom she’d never been too close to, was adamant about saving her instead of granting what would in truth have been a mercy kill.

Homura had been insane at that point. She knew that now. She’d been driven utterly mad by continual repeats of time, followed by that universal reset, followed by the tortuous methods the Incubators had used to isolate her soul gem from the universe. It was no wonder she’d finally cracked. Even now, eons later, Homura didn’t truly understand why the others _hadn’t_ just killed her then. Even if they didn’t know the full story, surely it would have been kinder to just destroy her, put down like a beloved pet gone rabid.

But if she wasn’t going to die, if her familiars weren’t going to escape into the world to wreak havoc, she would have to do something else to protect Madoka. And _that_ meant she couldn’t be taken by the Law of Cycles until Madoka was safe from Incubator interference.

Homura still remembered that moment like it had only happened yesterday. She’d managed to inch open her heavy eyelids, vision dazzled by the otherworldly glow of her best friend’s approach after so long essentially in a hallucinatory coma. Madoka had been talking. She’d not been listening. Actually, Homura wasn’t sure, later, if she _could_ hear Madoka’s words or not. Her hearing had kept going in and out.

And then—the moment. Madoka had been reaching for her soul gem, reaching to purify her. The words had just slipped out of Homura, almost unconsciously.

“ _You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting…for this._ ”

She meant the purification, of course. Even if she couldn’t allow it now, she’d been waiting so long for the chance to _rest_. To see Madoka smiling happily down at her again. But outside of that accidently admitted hidden desire, Homura had stuck to the mad plan that had occurred to her as Madoka had pulled her from the throes of her suicide curse.

She’d grasped Madoka’s hands tightly, just before they touched her soul gem. It shouldn’t have been possible—Madoka was not a physical entity any longer. She didn’t have hands to grab, even if it looked like she did. But Homura still had the power to choose whether she wanted to go with the Law of Cycles or not. If she went with Madoka, her goddess—her _love_ —would be in danger. So, for one moment, Homura had the power to hold onto a goddess.

“Now, I’ve got you,” she had said, dazed, still almost unaware of her words. Despite the impossibility, Madoka’s wrists felt warm in her grip. Madoka’s gloves were soft like silk. She’d been enraptured, almost madly overtaken with the knowledge that she’d managed to _capture_ this all-powerful, wonderful creature.

Of course, even she hadn’t taken into consideration that she was, truly, already a witch. And so when she’d used her power to stop the Law of Cycles, she’d accidently _stopped_ using it to contain her witch powers, which had been in the process of attempting to turn her soul gem into a grief seed now that the isolation field was gone.

And so a witch was born, the first—the _only one_ in this universe. But witches couldn’t exist. It was against the Law of Cycles. But Homura’s own god-level power insisted she _had_ to exist, to keep the Law of Cycles safe. So their two wishes had come into conflict.

So the universe had shattered.

The power had been intoxicating. She’d had no idea what was going on, but she’d been in ecstasy from the magic, insane from the power flooding her system, babbling nonsense against Madoka’s terrified protests. Homura had become something new. She’d called herself a demon, had described herself as an existence known as Evil, but Homura truly hadn’t had any idea what she’d become. For so long, she’d been stuck in that moment, that belief that she _was_ a devil now, the yang to Madoka’s yin.

That belief had first begun to be tested when she’d allowed time to stop looping in her labyrinth-universe. The idea of Madoka, cut away from her power, ageing with the others was not too hard to understand. They were all still magical girls, but without using their magic for fighting, Homura could manipulate their soul gem magic to only keep them healthy and age their bodies slowly. She could also use her own darkness to keep all their soul gems purified, to ensure none of them fell into despair and triggered Madoka’s need to save them. Less explainable was how Homura had aged right along with them.

She wasn’t human any longer. Sure, she had kept her body intact and wasn’t a pure concept like Madoka had been, but she was still a Principle of the universe, wasn’t she? Madoka seemed to have grown some in her time as goddess, but it was difficult to tell how much of that had been actual ageing and how much had been cosmetic, as part of her appearance as the ultimate magical girl. And yet, Homura had aged right alongside her friends.

As she’d grown up—as they had _all_ grown up—Homura had discovered an unlikely confidant in Madoka’s mother. Oh, she never even hinted at anything similar to the truth with the woman, but Junko had been fond of her, possibly due to wiped memories of their occasional encounters around town and their friendly conversations Homura had initiated mostly out of guilt that Madoka couldn’t be there to talk to her mother instead. Despite never being told anything, Junko seemed to intuit exactly how damaged Homura truly was, and she’d sneakily begun teaching her therapy techniques in the guise of fun vacation activities with the Kaname family and suggested new hobbies.

Homura didn’t fully recover, but…she did grow stable enough to admit she had been out of her mind for the better portion of her life since becoming a magical girl. And naturally, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one in the first place. Of course, it’d been just her luck that right around the time Homura was healing for the first time ever from her mental scars, the others had finally started to cotton on to the wrongness of her world.

She’d been thrown right back into battle, this time as the enemy to her friends, to Madoka, and it had been the hardest thing she ever did. In fact, Homura managed to put it off for several centuries by beginning the time loops again. Her friends once again fell into an oblivious stupor, extending the peace for a while longer. But in the end, they’d figured that out too, and the final battle had begun.

Homura had hated it. She’d finally started to heal, to acknowledge that perhaps she _didn’t have to be_ a monster, and now she had to play the role of devil as she’d promised Sayaka and Madoka. It was her destiny, she still believed. She was the dark to Madoka’s light. She _had_ to fight her if Madoka recovered enough to take that stand.

Good had triumphed, of course. Good always did, and it did help that Homura’s heart had never been in the fight. But the team hadn’t been able to kill her, and Madoka had refused to. Madoka had been unable to purify her, their two wishes still in conflict, and so the puella magi had done the only other thing they could think of, and they had imprisoned her.

It was a cruel sort of funny irony. She’d kept them in a beautiful gilded cage with their loved ones, all the luxuries they’d ever wanted, the freedom to roam wherever they wanted on Earth and still be within her grasp. She, the Devil, had been kinder than the heroes. Her prison had been her own soul gem, locked away by Madoka in a place humans and Incubators could never tamper with it. Despite having the space of a city, it had been utterly deserted except for Homura and her Clara dolls, and it had been a wreck, still containing the shattered aftermath of her explosive discovery of her transformation into a witch.

It had been a miserable, lonely existence. Homura’s only consolation was that she’d exterminated Incubators as a race. There would be no new magical girls, but the ones remaining could hopefully get rid of the wraiths, and then Madoka would purify them and entropy would be destroyed. Maybe if she was good and didn’t try to escape, Madoka would relent and release her. Or maybe visit her on occasion.

Homura supposed, now, that she’d been borrowing some of Madoka’s optimism when she’d decided to believe that.

She didn’t know how long she’d been locked away, only that it must have been a very long time indeed. Madoka never came to visit her. Homura’s only awareness of the passage of time came from her Clara dolls, who still had connections to her original powers enough to mark the millennia for her. The only time they lost count was when she fell asleep, lulled to somnolence by the tedium. Even in her despair, Homura had despaired even further.

She’d begun, near the end of her solitude, to try killing herself. She’d released curse after curse, but whatever Madoka had done to imprison her automatically absorbed her curses. She tried inflicting physical injury, but of course this wasn’t her real body, so that was more to entertain herself than anything. She even tried, desperately, to break out for the first time ever after close to a million years in solitary confinement. She failed, of course.

And then, one day, the prison holding Homura’s soul gem isolated and her body captive just…shattered. Her soul had reached out for her body. Her body had reabsorbed her soul gem. She’d been awake and aware for the first time in so long she couldn’t remember how long it had been.

Homura had opened her eyes to nothing.

It turned out, the magical girls had run out before the wraiths had. Without magical girls to keep entropy in check, it had spread. Various races across space had various tactics to deal with entropy. None were as horrific as the Incubator plan to gather energy and save only themselves from universal heat death had been, but by the same token none were as effective. Madoka herself managed, in the absence of magical girls, to do various things on her own to put off the end of the universe. But it hadn’t been enough.

Homura had opened her eyes to nothing, because the universe had ceased to exist. The universe had ended—and Madoka with it.

Homura had been left utterly alone at the end of time and space.

At first, she had desperately searched for any sign of Madoka. She’d grasped onto piece after failing piece of the shattered, broken, desolate universe, searching for life, for magic, for— _anything_!

Instead she had found nothing.

All she had left of Madoka was the lingering remnants of power and soul that had bound Homura up inside her soul gem, poured into her familiar hair ribbons, that had once been tied around her prison. It looked like Madoka had used pieces of her own soul gem to lock away Homura’s, her ribbons used as a binding chain. Homura had greedily grasped them, holding them close, but there was no life left in the fragments of magic embedded in delicate silk. No consciousness. It was just leftovers. Even as she refused to let go of the lingering shards of Madoka, she knew that the one she loved was gone forever.

Her grief had been terrible. She had cried. She had raged. She’d formed labyrinths around her only to shatter them again in disgust. Only her dolls, her fourteen Claras who had been her only comfort in eons of solitude, were spared her wrath. They’d hidden, huddled, inside her soul gem labyrinth, protecting and preserving the hair ribbons and the pieces of Madoka’s magic Homura had salvaged.

Eventually, though, Homura’s wild grief had been spent. And now here she was, drifting in nothing. She sighed, sadly, a noiseless sound in this empty void. She had the feeling a human would not be able to survive in this nothingness. But she’d already been locked away so long, and she’d not been as fragile as a human in eons. To her, it was like being cradled by sleep.

Homura sighed again, the sound loud in her head but inaudible to her ears. She gazed out into nothing—and sat stark upright in the void when her eyes glimpsed _color_.

That was…what _was_ that!?

It was red. And orange. And…purple?

Homura did like purple.

For the first time in ages, Homura’s wings unfurled. Flying in the void was more willpower and thought than actual flight, but the movement helped her visualize properly. In only a few wingbeats, Homura had transverse several universes’ worth of space and had reached the source of the color.

She flew closer and closer to the redness, to see it was…something like a universe. Or maybe a labyrinth. She’d never actually seen a whole universe from the outside. She’d _known_ the void was all around their universe while she maintained her labyrinth-universe on top of it, but she’d never seen the need to go there. She simply travelled back and forth between Madoka’s reality and her false one.

Homura drew even closer.

No, it _was_ a universe. Or…rather, multiple universes melded together. The cracks where the merging had happened pulsed sickeningly but held fast. It was rather ugly, actually. She counted the uneven spaces, the bulges and odd add-ons. Five. That was five universes, all stuck together. The inside didn’t seem like any universe she’d ever seen. The sky was full of space and stars, but there was a land that was less land and more kind of solid matter pretending to be land. That was the source of all the angry, vibrant colors. It was pretty messy. Homura thought it looked rather like someone with her levels of power had tried finger painting, or like someone with less power than her had tried to build a proper labyrinth-universe and failed.

Tentatively, Homura poked at the edges. She grimaced at the muck that stuck to her fingers. What was _that?_

Homura wiped her fingers on the handkerchief she’d absently created but was curious enough after a while of staring to poke it again. _Ew. So sticky_.

She flew around the universal mash-up, poking at various places. It was sticky all the way around. She felt like she needed a bath after touching all that. The only places the cloying tack was missing were the cracks. She supposed, if she shrunk herself down, she could slide her way inside through one of the cracks. Those were the weak points. But no, she wasn’t quite curious enough to risk getting stuck in this universe. So, Homura kept on watching.

Almost as interesting as the messy red not-labyrinth were the beautiful glowing bubbles all clustered about. Some were even touching the nasty red thing. Universes. These were all whole, perfect universes. Homura flew away from the red not-labyrinth for a while, exploring the universes from the outside. None were sticky and gross like the red one. Touched these pretty glowy masses was rather more like putting her hand through a mist, or soap film. Thankfully, popping them didn’t seem to be something she could do.

What she _could_ do, was enter these universes. Which she did, eventually. It was mostly out of curiosity, but she wasn’t brave enough to go near life. She stayed in space, flying among the stars. It was…actually rather fun. It was quiet, and beautiful, and she was still all alone, but somehow…she could feel almost at peace. She even felt well enough at one point to tie Madoka's ribbons back around her head. She smiled at her reflection in a lake on an uninhabited planet. Yes, that was better.

Despite her hesitant explorations, Homura kept returning to the ugly not-labyrinth. She’d determined, eventually, that the stickiness seemed to come from one of the universes that was touching the red mass. It was an old one, and the dominant race seemed to be a species of time-powered beings known as Time Giants whose home planet was called the Land of the Shadow-Walkers. Homura thought that was rather pretentious, but they didn’t seem to be much like Incubators to her spying. They were mostly focused on keeping history running in a certain order, and otherwise they were a decadent society entertained by things like gladiatorial time combat, virtual reality, and gardening. Their main enemies were the silliest-looking creatures Homura had ever seen, like a cross between a pepper pot and a thimble, with an egg whisk and plunger for weapons.

The sticky substance that had emerged from their universe seemed to be a barrier for the not-labyrinth. It kept the things inside that universe from leaving and possibly invading the universe of the Time Giants. But as much as it was a barrier around the not-labyrinth, Homura figured out after some experimentation with her lesser familiars that it wouldn’t actually trap _her_ at all. Possibly this was because she wasn’t the target of the barrier. When her familiars went through they always came back gross and covered in gunk, but they went back and forth easily enough.

She did keep drifting off to explore other universes, but she was always drawn back to this travesty of a universe, still curious at how and why it was so different from the others. Eventually, there came a day when she finally decided to slip inside.

It was kind of anticlimactic. Homura did go through the weaker area near one of the cracks merging the multiple universes together so she wouldn’t have so much gunk on her, but she slipped through as easily as she would have in any other normal universe. For the first time in… _eternities_ , Homura found herself standing on solid ground blinking up at a starry sky.

She stumbled. Heh. She’d forgotten how to walk. Deciding it would be too much trouble to relearn, Homura hovered just off the ground, using her wings to keep herself aloft.

She wandered, fascinated. This whole world really was like a labyrinth. Outlandish creatures, strange flora and fauna. It was like a labyrinth made reality. Like nightmares given claws. It…wasn’t all that bad, actually, even if Homura still thought it was clumsily made and blatantly amateurish work.

She tumbled wings over ankles when a loud voice that somehow managed to sound both obnoxious and charming spoke from a distance behind her.

“Well-well-well-well-well-well-well, _what_ do _we_ have _here_!?”

* * *

She was staring blankly. At least, she thought, her mouth wasn't hanging open like a dunce. Still, though, she couldn't stop staring.

It was…a triangle. A giant, glowing yellow triangle with a single eye, white with a slitted black pupil. It wore a top hat and a bow tie. Homura had the feeling if it had a mouth it would be grinning.

“Hello,” she said, very glad she hadn’t stuttered. Or shrieked in alarm. Or done anything else embarrassing.

“He- _llo_ ~ to you too, gorgeous! Where did _you_ come from?”

She hesitated. Inside the universe, its walls weren’t exactly easy to pinpoint. Oh, if she wanted to leave she could anytime, but…in the end she just gestured vaguely.

“Outside. I wanted to know why this universe was so weird. It’s…very bright, compared to the others.”

“Oh!” the triangle said brightly. “I did that myself. What do you think of it? I like color!”

Homura couldn’t help but smile. The whatever-it-was seemed so proud of its efforts. “The purple’s a nice touch,” she said politely.

The triangle bounced up and down. “Thanks!” it chirruped cheerfully. “So, when you say outside—just to clarify—you mean—”

“Outside the universe,” Homura said. “Yes. I. My universe. It. It ended.” She took a deep, shuddery breath. “I didn’t end with it.”

“ _Really,_ ” the triangle said, sounding fascinated. “But I thought that when a universe lost its cohesiveness, everything collapsed. I mean, that’s part of why I can meld whole other universes into mine. As long as there’s a crack touching my world, I can use my power to absorb a cracked universe into my own before it shatters completely, but the process only works because everything is ending anyway.”

Homura shrugged. “I’m a rule breaker, I guess. I was also locked in a fairly airtight prison. I suppose, in the end,” she said, realizing it for the first time, “that may have been what saved me.”

The triangle’s hat drifted to one side, like it was curious. “Prison?”

Homura’s chin went up, her eyes flashed demonic purple-red and her wings flared. “I was an existence known as Evil in my universe. I once pulled our god down from the heavens and held her as my captive for close to ten thousand years.” Give or take another couple thousand, but who was counting.

Astonishingly, the triangle didn’t find that at all off-putting.

“ _Wow!_ ” it crowed instead. “That’s _epic_! Wait till Paci-Fire hears—he’s gonna be so jealous!”

Homura blinked. “Jealous?”

The triangle drifted closer and wrapped a thin black arm around her shoulders. “Oh, yeah, I mean, his stock introduction is “I have butchered millions on countless moons”. Seriously. I bet he says that when you first meet him, five bucks. But none of us have managed to rip a god down and imprison it! Ten thousand years, you said? That’s a pretty good run for the ultimate coup! You must have been living the sweet life!”

“It…was nice while it lasted,” Homura said slowly. She felt…was confused the right word? It seemed too mild.

Was she really being complimented for doing that exact wrong thing and locking away the person she'd loved? Even when her head had practically been screwed on _backwards_ she'd known how wrong her actions were.

Homura did not like feeling bewildered, but she was getting a lot of that right now.

“You’re pretty stoic, aren’t you, sweetheart," the triangle said when Homura had trailed off into an awkward silence. "Hey, what’s your name? Or do you just go by Evil? Got any nicknames?”

“I—” Some instinct made her not want to give her real name. Homura Akemi had died ages ago, for one. For another, _Homura-chan_ had always belonged to Madoka. And while Homulily was her witch name, it felt too close to her real one to give out. “I’m the Nutcracker Witch. And the Breaker of the Cycle. Or…I guess you could call me Lucifer.” It was close enough. The biblical connotations fit, at least in her mind.

“I’ll call you Lucy!” The little triangle held out a hand. “My name’s Bill! Bill Cipher! I’m the boss of this wreck of a universe! I’d love it if you stayed a while, kept us company since you’ve got nowhere to go. The more the merrier!”

Homura took his hand. It wasn’t exactly warm, like a human hand. Instead, it tingled like static electricity. It was the first hand she’d taken in eons. She smiled. “It’s very nice to meet you, Bill. I’d love to stay a while.” She stepped back and bowed like the proper Japanese girl she still was deep down. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Ooh! A polite demon! You’re _adorable_!”

Homura couldn’t help it. She blushed.

* * *

Bill took her over to meet his new friends, and Homura learnt he had a palace. It was shaped like a giant floating pyramid, and the inside was a maze of corridors that rarely listened to logic or gravity. Homura loved it.

“I call this my Fearamid. Geddit? _Fear_ -amid? Because it’s a pyramid full of fearsome things?”

Homura’s lips twitched into another smile. “You like wordplay, don’t you?” she observed.

“Words are my game, darlin’! Best game there is! Once you know the tricks of the trade it’s super hard for someone else to turn them against you.”

Homura blinked and considered that. She stopped, and the triangle paused as well. She clasped her hands together and bowed again. “Please, teach me!”

Bill blinked his one massive eye. “Teach you?”

“Teach me wordplay!” Homura insisted. “I—back in my universe—I only lost because I was tricked through a contract. If you teach me, I can’t lose like that ever again!”

Because even now, eons later, Homura considered the day she’d been convinced by Kyuubey to form a contract with him the day she’d begun to lose. Sure, things had been terrible before then, but it’d been normal life terrible (and was now so long ago she couldn’t even really remember what normal life had been like). After the contract, she’d been in unending hell after unending hell.

Bill tapped the area above his bowtie. His chin? Maybe?

“Well, that does sound like fun! I’ve never had a student before.”

Homura decided to sweeten the deal. “In exchange, I can try to teach you some of the ways I know to warp reality. So you can continue to alter your universe. Fair warning, though, I’m not sure _my_ methods are teachable. Most of what I do is instinctual.”

Bill clapped his hands together. “That still sounds like fun! And I definitely agree! It’s a deal!” He held out one hand that erupted into blue flames. Homura blinked at it, and the flames went out after a moment of staring. Bill’s voice was…quieter, more real now. “Oh, you said you lost via contract. You probably don’t want to make any new ones, do you?”

Homura hesitated, thought about it, and then shook her head. Bill once again grew large enough to wrap an arm around her shoulders.

“That’s alright, Lucy-babe! You’re one of us now! I shouldn’t be making deals with my own friends anyway. We’ll just call it a gentleman’s agreement, how about that!”

The former magical girl couldn’t help the smile that grew again. “I’m hardly a gentle anything, but I can agree to that.”

“O-kay! Let’s go meet my Henchmaniacs now. You’ll love them, I just know it!”

The Henchmaniacs were a lively bunch. All different shapes and sizes—all different powers. It was interesting. Homura was the most human-looking one present. With her form-fitting black dress of feathers and her cockamamie wings, she felt almost out of place among the motley assortment of demonic creatures.

“My dudes, this is Lucifer! She’s a demon from a dead universe, wants to hang with us for a while!” Bill’s introduction was announced with a flourish. Homura smiled, clasped her hands, and bowed.

“I’m pleased to meet all of you,” she said.

One pink creature made at least half of fire who looked rather like a facsimile of a human woman bounded up to her.

“Ooh!” the creature crowed. “Cipher, you got us a _girl_!? I’m not the only woman any longer!”

A flaming hand was stuck out. “I’m Pyronica, by the way.”

Homura shook the hand with a smile. “Lucifer, like Bill said. I love your dress.”

Pyronica let out a high-pitched squeal. “Oh and I love yours, baby-doll! We should exchange wardrobe tips!”

Homura nodded. “Later,” she suggested. A fat monster with endless red eyes and a pacifier stuck into its stomach stumbled forwards.

“I have butchered millions on countless moons,” it droned.

Bill elbowed Homura and winked. Homura’s nose went up.

“Oh, is that all? _I_ held a god captive once. I even had her minions happily brainwashed into helping me keep her complacent for the ten thousand years I ruled my universe. I butchered an entire species across time and space.”

There was no change in expression, but she thought the creature was pouting. A walking set of dentures elbowed Paci-Fire out of the way, chattering with laughter.

“Man, you showed him! You make us look like small fries! Good on you!”

Then Homura felt a tug on the ribbon still tied around her head— _Madoka’s_ ribbons, the only thing her goddess had left behind upon dying with their universe. She bared her teeth, her power flaring and her labyrinth unfurling around her. Her demon goddess form melted into her witch body, and a skeletal arm picked up the miscreant and _squeezed_.

D̨̛͓͍̬͚̖̞̬͔̗̀̇͊͌͛̉̆̓̕Ȍ̧̠̣̗͎̪̠͉̌̎͒͆͘̕N̢̨͎͓̦̝͍͓͖͗͗͌̌̐’̛̝̳͚̭̦͊̉̾́̇̚ͅŤ̸̢͔̜̼̟̳̍̈̏͂̾̂͡ Y̝͚̰͇̳̦̣͐̓͆̈͂͡͞ͅƠ̸̡̰̥͈̹͕͊̇̈̾̊̿̎̚͢Ú̺̹̭̙̟̭͙͙̩̃͌̓͑̚ T̷̡͎͍̯̮̭̳̲̮̅͗̆̅̎ͅO̴̼̣̝͕̳͛͐͆̽̇̍̃̕͡Ù͉͍̝͉̭̩̠̖͌͛̒͒̆͌͡C̬̘̞̹̰͕͓͍͌̑͘̚͝ͅH̷̳̭̭̜̝̑̑͑̀̊͡͝͡ T̷̝̬̭̣̲͉̭̻̘͔̒̃̋͑͒̋͊H̫̩͎̮͈͚̓̍͛̑̕̕̚Â̵̻͉͓͖͉͆̓̊͐̾͘T̸̠͙̤͔̘̾̈́͒̾̊̓̃!̸̡͔͙̟͈͎̦̥̒͋͒̍̕͝ D̫̤̘̻̞̻̳͚̄̍̌̅͛Ŏ̟̹̤̘͈̯̭̆̒̅̄͌͝Ň̰̮̣̭̞̺́̓͑̈́͑̏̇̈͝’̡̩͕̙̂͒̑̊̌̂͘͜͟͡͝Ṱ̠̘̥̅́̂͘͢ Ȇ̢̠͍̭͕̦̆̃͒͌́V̧̭̗͇̝̼̣̫͇̒̄͂͑͐͂̓E̱͍̙͖̺̠͋̃̀͐̾͛̾̕̕R̨͇̗̳̦͔̞͍̻̈́̂͗̏̆̋̉͝ Ṱ̵̘̯͍̰͗̎̌̚͠Ṍ̝͇̭̖̟̃̈́̈͢Ų̸̬͇̤͚̮͚̓̂͗̇̆C̳̮͚̱͕̙̲̲͛̉͂̄̈́͛̽͑Ḩ̧̳̥͖̫̪͚̰̾̽̈́͒͒͝ͅ İ̸̲̦̘͓̝͂́̔̈́̇̎͛͢T̴̨̮̮͎̖̼̼̦͖́̔̂̈́̆̉̇!͓͍͚̦͍̦̔̓̐̐͊̓̕ Į̷̥͇̫͇͖̜̯̟͛̄͂͊̊͗͢͝͝͡T̨̩̫̗̪̜̘̫͔͊̇͋̑͆́͘’̡̢͈͔̪̖̹̖̓̔̌͊̊̽̕͜S̵̢̢̪̬̹̘̀̈̂̉̚ M͈̲̫̝̖̭̹̱͒͆̌͒̕͠ͅĮ͇̜̖͚̥͍̭̘̫̄͂̕̕N̶̜͎͎͓̖̰̘̼̿̏̀̏̃̓͆͠͠E̵̠͔͉̮͓̖̔͐̍̈͐͘!̢͍͚̘̱̺̜̳̋̒̈́̐͆̽͘͘͜͞ͅ

The green monster squealed in her grasp, its eight-ball eyes rolling. Bill tapped Homura on one lace-draped bony shoulder.

“I think he’s got it, darling. He won’t touch again, but why don’t you give it a few months before you kill anyone.”

Homura blinked and let the monster drop. She took a deep, shuddering breath, a few teeth spilling out of her spider-lily wreath before she could force her body back into a less eldritch shape. She tucked her labyrinth away and bowed to Bill. “My apologies for losing my temper,” she said evenly.

Bill just laughed. “Don’t sweat it, Lucy darling! I actually thought that was cool! You’re awesome, you know that?”

She just shrugged. “I am Evil. I am the Witch of the World Order.”

“Well, I’d say you fit right in with my crew!” Bill was doing that thing where he would probably be grinning if he had a mouth.

Slowly, Homura smiled. Maybe…maybe she could be happy here. Maybe she could find a new purpose, as a demon among demons.

At least here she wasn’t alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all had fun reading that; I had fun writing it. I figure Homura will stay in the Nightmare Realm a few centuries at least; I may or may not write some extra snippets of her time as one of the Henchmaniacs and post later, but for now this is all I have.


End file.
